Shirish Kunder’s ‘Kriti’ Is A Copy Of Nepalese Movie?

A Nepalese director Aneel Neupane has alleged that Shirish Kunder’s recently released short film ‘Kriti’ is copied from his own ‘BOB’.

‘Kriti’ is a psychological thriller starring Radhika Apte, Manoj Bajpayee and Neha Sharma. It was released online on June 22 amidst much fanfare and to rave reviews from the industry

Kathmandu based Aneel took to Facebook and wrote that Kunder has ‘practically stolen the plot of BOB’, which released on Vimeo a few months ago.

“Initially, I thought maybe the first few frames, the setting and characters resembled BOB. I thought it was just a co-incidence. I was actually excited to watch a short film starring Mr Manoj Bajpayee (A great actor whom I admire a lot!) and Neha Sharma (whom I’ve had a HUGE crush on ever since I saw her in the movie Crook). As the movie progressed, I was shocked to find so much similarities,” wrote Mr Neupane of ‘Kriti’.

Aneel went on to add that his team made ‘BOB’ under severe financial constraints, while Kunder simply stole their idea and ‘made money’ off their intellectual property.

“I’m angry because we didn’t even have lunch money while shooting BOB, and a spot boy for Kriti probably made more money than BOB‘s entire budget. My team and I didn’t work our asses off just so some rich dude from India could turn it into this and get away with it. That’s just not fair,” Mr Neupane wrote.

Meanwhile, Shirish Kunder has denied that ‘Kriti’ is stolen off Aneel’s film or that he had even watched his film.

“These allegations are technically, factually and logically baseless. That short film (Bob) was released on May 12 whereas we shot Kriti in February, after which it was in post-production. How is it even possible to ‘lift’ the idea, unless I was time travelling,” said Kunder.

The plot of the two movies is certainly similar – that of a man who consults a psychiatrist about whether or not his girlfriend exists outside of his mind.

We will leave you with links to both the movies so that you can decide for yourself – copied or not?!